Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 15:03:37 -0700
From: Clare Howell
Subject: IYF-Court Uphold Privacy Rights
MEDIA ADVISORY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Editor: Clare Howell, clare@gpac.org
.MURDERED TRANS-WOMAN'S NIECE WILL LOBBY CONGRESS
.COURT UPHOLDS TRANSEXUALS' PRIVACY RIGHTS
MURDERED TRANS-WOMAN'S NIECE WILL LOBBY CONGRESS
================================================
[New York, NY: 10 Apr 99] "WHEN I SAW DEBBIE'S BODY AT
the morgue, every bone in her neck was broken. Her head
was so bashed her face was unrecognizable and she had
been stabbed 6 times in the chest." Kathy St. Pierre
spoke of the 1995 murder of her aunt, trans-woman Debbie
Forte. "I'm coming to Lobby Day to talk about my aunt's
murder, to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.
My aunt was loved. She was with a lover for 30 years.
What happened to her shouldn't happen to a human being."
Kathy, an out lesbian since the age of 15, will
be talking to Congressmembers from her home state,
Massachusetts, about the upcoming Hate Crimes Prevention
Act (HCPA) and its impact on people who are gender-
different and their loved ones.
President Clinton has publicly endorsed HCPA and
called for swift passage by Congress. The bill covers
people based on their "sexual orientation and real or
perceived gender."
Said Riki Anne Wilchins, of GenderPAC, "The fact
that 'gender' is in the bill in encouraging, but courts
in the past have construed it narrowly to mean simply boy
and girl. Our job at Lobby Day is to make Congressmembers
aware that gender includes gender-different."
National Gender Lobby Day will be held in
Washington, D.C. from Sunday, 23 May, to Tuesday, 25 May
99.
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COURT UPHOLDS TRANSEXUALS' PRIVACY RIGHTS
=========================================
[New York, NY: 12 Apr 99] THE 2ND CIRCUIT U.S. COURT
of Appeals declared Friday that transexuals have a
constitutional right to maintain medical confidentially
and they do not lose that right upon being jailed.
The New York Law Review reports that a
corrections officer violated transexual woman Dana
Kimberly Devilla's right to privacy and subjected
her to cruel and unusual punishment when he told
others in a Buffalo-area prison that Ms. Devilla
was an HIV-positive transexual.
"Like HIV status...transexualism is the unusual
condition that is likely to provoke an intense desire to
preserve one's medical confidentially, as well as
hostility and intolerance from others," said Judge D.
Jacobs, writing for the majority.
He said that the officer's "gratuitous disclosure"
of the inmate's transexualism was not "reasonably related
to legitimate penological interest, and it therefore
violates the inmate's constitutional right to privacy."
He added that such a disclosure could place an inmate
in "harm's way" and lead to "substantial risk that the
inmate would suffer serious harm at the hands of other
inmates."
Ms. Devilla died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of
36 while her suit was pending. Her estate was substituted
as plaintiff. She had been imprisoned for cashing bad
checks.
###
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